Intersectionalism of Emoji: Theory and Practice

You can find, on some of the more electrifying corners of the internet, thinkpieces on the politics of emoji skin colour. Personally, I think it's great that the vapid postmodern symbols we've been induced to substitute for meaningful communication can now be melanin-adjusted. What better way to reinforce our trust and unyielding fealty to the corporations that provide these geegaws than to drape them in our own skin. Truly, this enables me to better actualize myself as a human being. But anyway.

Slack (the messaging app) recently took it a step further and introduced an "all" skin tone emoji. That's right. So now, instead of having to choose whether your vaguely distant signal of approval is best transcribed as 👍🏻 or 👍🏼 or 👍🏽 or 👍🏾 or 👍🏿 (and let's be honest, in Portland, it's probably 👍🏻, but they're gonna try to pass for 👍🏽) you can get an animated version that cycles through all of them, for a few seconds each, ad infinitum. That's right — you don't have to choose! Some observations:

1. It's only ever white people that do this shit.2. What problem is this intended to solve?3. Is this not simply a full-circle, functional reversal to the Simpsons-yellow we started with?4. The fact that it's animating between skin tones visually obscures the actual gesture.5. Why not just use words?